Vasil Stoilov's work fits into that broad band in Bulgarian art from the first half and middle of the 20th century, modeled by the native theme, which becomes the face of essential manifestations of his character. Moreover, the artist is among its brightest, most original representatives and we can hardly imagine our art since then without his everyday painting, populated with idyllic landscapes and compositions with expressive rural images, drawn from life itself. Inseparably connected to his roots and his native village of German, Stoilov continued to paint them even during the years of his stay in Paris (1928 – 1933). In fact, not only did he "not stop painting them", they categorically defined his work from then on and the exhibitions he organized there showed precisely native subjects. It was with them that he won the attention of French art criticism. To the trained professional eye in the city-cradle of the avant-garde, the strange faces of Stoilov's heroes sound exotic and attractively modern. They seem to come from distant, unknown worlds, which through the watercolor sheets of the young Bulgarian offer the viewer a bridge between antiquity and the present. There is something in them from the mysticism in the compositions of the old Bruegel. Stoilov, like the classics from whom he studied devotedly in the Louvre, perfectly masters the ability to extract the essence. This is also helped by his natural spiritual attitude to search beyond the visible. He is accustomed to the tendency towards esotericism, later to Freemasonry and the pursuit of questions about the secrets of existence. Therefore, when we face his genre painting, it would be wrong to look at it from the position of the ethnographic. In it, the rural motif is cleansed of the superfluous, because it is only an occasion for the artist to immerse himself in the deep layers of the folk psyche and to extract ethical, moral postulates to the surface. Something that we find in the work of another great Bulgarian artist – Vladimir Dimitrov-Maistora, with whom Stoilov communicated over the years and whose image he would paint more than once.

Vasil Stoilov’s broad artistic profile also ranks him among our most gifted portraitists. An accurate eye and deep empathy for the character of the model determine the endless portrait gallery that he creates. Regardless of whether they are a pencil linear sketch or a representative solution in oil technique or watercolor, his works in the portrait genre are respected, and among them the impressive group of self-portraits have a special weight.

But beyond these successes, Vasil Stoilov defines himself more as a landscape artist. Landscape organically enters the fabric of his creative nature from his first steps in painting and it is no coincidence that the focus that researchers of his work place is mostly on the landscape. Ruza Marinska writes: "I think that even today Vasil Stoilov's landscape work has not been appreciated in depth. They recognize his virtuoso performance, they like the natural calm tone with which he arranges the natural paintings. But they remain closed to the pantheism that permeates them, to the entire powerful symphony that rages "behind the frame." I am sure that if Stoilov experienced true happiness, it was in those moments when, overshadowed by God, he created his landscapes” (R. Marinska: 2004, 34). Here we are talking about the natural landscape, although Stoilov left behind a number of no less memorable works with motifs from urban or Renaissance architecture. But perhaps only by turning to nature did he manage to maximally express his special sensitivity, which curiously interwoven into his work the taste for intellectual pursuits with esotericism and the love for the native land with its rough, primal power. The means by which he achieved this were a virtuoso hand and erudition. Drawing with full handfuls from old Dutch painting, the artist learned, in the complex technique of watercolor, to boldly tame light and subordinate it to the laws of plastic space. Proof of this are his watercolor landscapes from the 1930s and 1940s of the 20th century – one from another more impressive not only with the mastery of complex urban color, but also with that strange, as if radiating from the painting itself, mystical light, coming from deep and wide, only Stoilov's skies. We recognize these landscapes by the low horizon, by the deliberate and, as if, hyperbolized in places, wide deployment of the sky with clouds, directly suggesting the lessons of Stoilov's beloved Roisdael. The landscape seems to dominate this exhibition in the Lorang gallery, which has gathered a small part of the impressive work of our great watercolorist. However, it is enough to feel again the artist, who managed to once again draw us into the depths of his art and through them to translate us into his personal peace of mind.

Anelia Nikolaeva